The first President in my living memory to call for a weak Dollar policy. Ironically, I can't say that I necessarily disagree. But higher inflation would be the price.
Given how low inflation has been since the crash, that would be relatively beneficial. Especially since the Fed is much better at killing inflation than nurturing it.
I would take that a step further and argue that we should reevaluate the 2% inflation target.
Genuine curiosity: In favor of what?
Right now I have a pretty extreme opinion and would argue 4%. But in real life this should be a careful, evidence-based process; at the end of which 4% may not be the right number.
4%? Just to like, erase the value of all cash assets and debts over 20 years?
Pretty much no one keeps large amounts of cash, but if they do that should be discouraged and debts, do and would price it in.
I don't necessarily think it should be done immediately, but there's pretty good evidence from the last financial crisis hat a higher target would help.
Actually loads of people and companies keep large amounts of cash. Its kind of a crisis right now*. Apple, Google, Amazon,and Microsoft right now about have 500 Billion cash on hand. If they were to spend it they would increase GPD by about 2.6%. And they're just four companies. Now much of those assets are "long term" because apple plans to hold them for more than a year, but they're still cash equivalents.
*and one of the reasons that i do not think we're actually at full employment/full GPD even with our low unemployment rates.
Are we not taxing the shit out of that?
No. They're retained after-tax profits, proceeds from taking out debt, paper investments like stocks, etc. We tax profits, not assets (for the most part).
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The first President in my living memory to call for a weak Dollar policy. Ironically, I can't say that I necessarily disagree. But higher inflation would be the price.
Given how low inflation has been since the crash, that would be relatively beneficial. Especially since the Fed is much better at killing inflation than nurturing it.
I would take that a step further and argue that we should reevaluate the 2% inflation target.
Genuine curiosity: In favor of what?
Right now I have a pretty extreme opinion and would argue 4%. But in real life this should be a careful, evidence-based process; at the end of which 4% may not be the right number.
4%? Just to like, erase the value of all cash assets and debts over 20 years?
Pretty much no one keeps large amounts of cash, but if they do that should be discouraged and debts, do and would price it in.
I don't necessarily think it should be done immediately, but there's pretty good evidence from the last financial crisis hat a higher target would help.
Actually loads of people and companies keep large amounts of cash. Its kind of a crisis right now*. Apple, Google, Amazon,and Microsoft right now about have 500 Billion cash on hand. If they were to spend it they would increase GPD by about 2.6%. And they're just four companies. Now much of those assets are "long term" because apple plans to hold them for more than a year, but they're still cash equivalents.
*and one of the reasons that i do not think we're actually at full employment/full GPD even with our low unemployment rates.
Are we not taxing the shit out of that?
No. They're retained after-tax profits, proceeds from taking out debt, paper investments like stocks, etc. We tax profits, not assets (for the most part).
Also, they hide money. Taxes are only applied to profits on cash from profit that is brought back to corporation's origin.
The first President in my living memory to call for a weak Dollar policy. Ironically, I can't say that I necessarily disagree. But higher inflation would be the price.
Given how low inflation has been since the crash, that would be relatively beneficial. Especially since the Fed is much better at killing inflation than nurturing it.
I would take that a step further and argue that we should reevaluate the 2% inflation target.
Genuine curiosity: In favor of what?
Right now I have a pretty extreme opinion and would argue 4%. But in real life this should be a careful, evidence-based process; at the end of which 4% may not be the right number.
4%? Just to like, erase the value of all cash assets and debts over 20 years?
Pretty much no one keeps large amounts of cash, but if they do that should be discouraged and debts, do and would price it in.
I don't necessarily think it should be done immediately, but there's pretty good evidence from the last financial crisis hat a higher target would help.
Actually loads of people and companies keep large amounts of cash. Its kind of a crisis right now*. Apple, Google, Amazon,and Microsoft right now about have 500 Billion cash on hand. If they were to spend it they would increase GPD by about 2.6%. And they're just four companies. Now much of those assets are "long term" because apple plans to hold them for more than a year, but they're still cash equivalents.
*and one of the reasons that i do not think we're actually at full employment/full GPD even with our low unemployment rates.
Are those companies actually holding literal cash? I was under the assumption they put it in very liquid low risk investments like US treasuries. It seems like a higher target would encourage these companies to either spend the cash or invest it both which would be better for the economy than them holding it.
The first President in my living memory to call for a weak Dollar policy. Ironically, I can't say that I necessarily disagree. But higher inflation would be the price.
Given how low inflation has been since the crash, that would be relatively beneficial. Especially since the Fed is much better at killing inflation than nurturing it.
I would take that a step further and argue that we should reevaluate the 2% inflation target.
Genuine curiosity: In favor of what?
Right now I have a pretty extreme opinion and would argue 4%. But in real life this should be a careful, evidence-based process; at the end of which 4% may not be the right number.
4%? Just to like, erase the value of all cash assets and debts over 20 years?
Pretty much no one keeps large amounts of cash, but if they do that should be discouraged and debts, do and would price it in.
I don't necessarily think it should be done immediately, but there's pretty good evidence from the last financial crisis hat a higher target would help.
Actually loads of people and companies keep large amounts of cash. Its kind of a crisis right now*. Apple, Google, Amazon,and Microsoft right now about have 500 Billion cash on hand. If they were to spend it they would increase GPD by about 2.6%. And they're just four companies. Now much of those assets are "long term" because apple plans to hold them for more than a year, but they're still cash equivalents.
*and one of the reasons that i do not think we're actually at full employment/full GPD even with our low unemployment rates.
Are those companies actually holding literal cash? I was under the assumption they put it in very liquid low risk investments like US treasuries. It seems like a higher target would encourage these companies to either spend the cash or invest it both which would be better for the economy than them holding it.
if they do those things they have to pay taxes on it
The first President in my living memory to call for a weak Dollar policy. Ironically, I can't say that I necessarily disagree. But higher inflation would be the price.
Given how low inflation has been since the crash, that would be relatively beneficial. Especially since the Fed is much better at killing inflation than nurturing it.
I would take that a step further and argue that we should reevaluate the 2% inflation target.
Genuine curiosity: In favor of what?
Right now I have a pretty extreme opinion and would argue 4%. But in real life this should be a careful, evidence-based process; at the end of which 4% may not be the right number.
4%? Just to like, erase the value of all cash assets and debts over 20 years?
Pretty much no one keeps large amounts of cash, but if they do that should be discouraged and debts, do and would price it in.
I don't necessarily think it should be done immediately, but there's pretty good evidence from the last financial crisis hat a higher target would help.
Actually loads of people and companies keep large amounts of cash. Its kind of a crisis right now*. Apple, Google, Amazon,and Microsoft right now about have 500 Billion cash on hand. If they were to spend it they would increase GPD by about 2.6%. And they're just four companies. Now much of those assets are "long term" because apple plans to hold them for more than a year, but they're still cash equivalents.
*and one of the reasons that i do not think we're actually at full employment/full GPD even with our low unemployment rates.
Are we not taxing the shit out of that?
No. They're retained after-tax profits, proceeds from taking out debt, paper investments like stocks, etc. We tax profits, not assets (for the most part).
Also, they hide money. Taxes are only applied to profits on cash from profit that is brought back to corporation's origin.
They changed that. US tax on overseas profits is now 5% and there is no repatriation penalty. (This is actually better than a lot of countries, which don't tax foreign profits at all). I'm pretty sure they made that all permanent.
I'm not sure how I feel about this because one of the reasons America grew to be such a powerful player all over the world was because of our high repatriation taxes. Once our companies started investing overseas, many of them looked at the high repatriation taxes and said screw that, let's just keep our foreign profits abroad and reinvest them there. It's one of the big contributing factors as to why a disproportionate amount of the world's biggest international companies are American, and now we've given up that incentive.
The first President in my living memory to call for a weak Dollar policy. Ironically, I can't say that I necessarily disagree. But higher inflation would be the price.
Given how low inflation has been since the crash, that would be relatively beneficial. Especially since the Fed is much better at killing inflation than nurturing it.
I would take that a step further and argue that we should reevaluate the 2% inflation target.
Genuine curiosity: In favor of what?
Right now I have a pretty extreme opinion and would argue 4%. But in real life this should be a careful, evidence-based process; at the end of which 4% may not be the right number.
4%? Just to like, erase the value of all cash assets and debts over 20 years?
Pretty much no one keeps large amounts of cash, but if they do that should be discouraged and debts, do and would price it in.
I don't necessarily think it should be done immediately, but there's pretty good evidence from the last financial crisis hat a higher target would help.
Actually loads of people and companies keep large amounts of cash. Its kind of a crisis right now*. Apple, Google, Amazon,and Microsoft right now about have 500 Billion cash on hand. If they were to spend it they would increase GPD by about 2.6%. And they're just four companies. Now much of those assets are "long term" because apple plans to hold them for more than a year, but they're still cash equivalents.
*and one of the reasons that i do not think we're actually at full employment/full GPD even with our low unemployment rates.
Are those companies actually holding literal cash? I was under the assumption they put it in very liquid low risk investments like US treasuries. It seems like a higher target would encourage these companies to either spend the cash or invest it both which would be better for the economy than them holding it.
Treasuries/cash equivalents are similarly impacted by rising inflation as the quarters in your couch.
The main thing about a higher inflation Target is that what really matters to most people is the rate of change rather than the baseline rate it is changing from. The immediate effect of a "regime change" of 2% to 4% would be a bit problematic for people with long term positions based on the assumption that 2% would be the perpetual rate. (Meaning hurting banks or pension funds, but helping mortgage holders, &c.) However, once the switch is made it's just the new normal. So COLA raises switch from ~2% to ~4% or so, but at the end of the day you're at the same spot since inflation is still keeping pace.
The first President in my living memory to call for a weak Dollar policy. Ironically, I can't say that I necessarily disagree. But higher inflation would be the price.
Given how low inflation has been since the crash, that would be relatively beneficial. Especially since the Fed is much better at killing inflation than nurturing it.
I would take that a step further and argue that we should reevaluate the 2% inflation target.
Genuine curiosity: In favor of what?
Right now I have a pretty extreme opinion and would argue 4%. But in real life this should be a careful, evidence-based process; at the end of which 4% may not be the right number.
4%? Just to like, erase the value of all cash assets and debts over 20 years?
Pretty much no one keeps large amounts of cash, but if they do that should be discouraged and debts, do and would price it in.
I don't necessarily think it should be done immediately, but there's pretty good evidence from the last financial crisis hat a higher target would help.
Actually loads of people and companies keep large amounts of cash. Its kind of a crisis right now*. Apple, Google, Amazon,and Microsoft right now about have 500 Billion cash on hand. If they were to spend it they would increase GPD by about 2.6%. And they're just four companies. Now much of those assets are "long term" because apple plans to hold them for more than a year, but they're still cash equivalents.
*and one of the reasons that i do not think we're actually at full employment/full GPD even with our low unemployment rates.
Are those companies actually holding literal cash? I was under the assumption they put it in very liquid low risk investments like US treasuries. It seems like a higher target would encourage these companies to either spend the cash or invest it both which would be better for the economy than them holding it.
They're largely not actual bills but rather cash equivalents. There isn't any real difference between corporate paper and money in a bank account and there isn't much difference between that and treasuries. Its largely in corporate paper though is my understanding.
I think one of the more interesting things from the Klein-Rodrik interview I mentioned last page is that Rodrik questions why other countries are taking part in the tariffs as well.
Since tariffs have two effect groups, producers and consumers, the country instituting tariffs may be "helping" producers, but they're hurting consumers by putting them on.
Yeah, we were already dealing with prices going up on goods before Trump's dumb fucking tariffs. Sadly and a bit surprisingly the GOP fell in line for this stupid shit. One would think that enough of their donors wouldn't be happy with getting fucked over and a fair bit of the base is going to get fucked as well. There are enough people that won't buy into the whole "it's the other's fault," they'll see prices go up and it's going to be the fault of the fuckers in charge, which happens to be the GOP. Trump and the GOP are playing with fire and they will likely get burned because IIRC with most voters, the party that gets blamed for being in charge, is whoever has the white house. Worse the the GOP, even if someone realizes that the POTUS doesn't have such extensive control on the economy, those are the people that will quickly tie back all the shitty policies hosing them financial to the GOP that put them forward.
I guess the only question is when do the tariffs really start fucking the economy. I'm leaning towards before the midterms. Hell, there are already companies laying people off because of this shit and big business pretty much gave the little guy the finger once they got their tax breaks. So we're really not seeing wages go up and I'd wager the wages in areas that are going up. Are only going up because other factors are pushing them up and that the asshole corporate class would be cutting wages if they thought they could get away with it.
I think one of the more interesting things from the Klein-Rodrik interview I mentioned last page is that Rodrik questions why other countries are taking part in the tariffs as well.
Since tariffs have two effect groups, producers and consumers, the country instituting tariffs may be "helping" producers, but they're hurting consumers by putting them on.
Because the effects of the tariff are localized to the industries you’re helping and because there is an equal effect on the other side.
That is the other countries are attempting to punish producers in the United States who support trump or who could have enough political sway to end our tariffs.
Edit: basically they are defecting until the US comes to its senses and stops defecting. Given how Rs operate they may have to wait a long time.
Yeah, we were already dealing with prices going up on goods before Trump's dumb fucking tariffs. Sadly and a bit surprisingly the GOP fell in line for this stupid shit. One would think that enough of their donors wouldn't be happy with getting fucked over and a fair bit of the base is going to get fucked as well. There are enough people that won't buy into the whole "it's the other's fault," they'll see prices go up and it's going to be the fault of the fuckers in charge, which happens to be the GOP. Trump and the GOP are playing with fire and they will likely get burned because IIRC with most voters, the party that gets blamed for being in charge, is whoever has the white house. Worse the the GOP, even if someone realizes that the POTUS doesn't have such extensive control on the economy, those are the people that will quickly tie back all the shitty policies hosing them financial to the GOP that put them forward.
I guess the only question is when do the tariffs really start fucking the economy. I'm leaning towards before the midterms. Hell, there are already companies laying people off because of this shit and big business pretty much gave the little guy the finger once they got their tax breaks. So we're really not seeing wages go up and I'd wager the wages in areas that are going up. Are only going up because other factors are pushing them up and that the asshole corporate class would be cutting wages if they thought they could get away with it.
If you had a compensation spectrum for employees that had "Equitable Profit Sharing" on one end and "slavery" on the other you'd see plenty of people argue that a corporation's only ethical imperative on that scale is to push towards slavery as hard as they can since that benefits their shareholders.
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Yeah, we were already dealing with prices going up on goods before Trump's dumb fucking tariffs. Sadly and a bit surprisingly the GOP fell in line for this stupid shit. One would think that enough of their donors wouldn't be happy with getting fucked over and a fair bit of the base is going to get fucked as well. There are enough people that won't buy into the whole "it's the other's fault," they'll see prices go up and it's going to be the fault of the fuckers in charge, which happens to be the GOP. Trump and the GOP are playing with fire and they will likely get burned because IIRC with most voters, the party that gets blamed for being in charge, is whoever has the white house. Worse the the GOP, even if someone realizes that the POTUS doesn't have such extensive control on the economy, those are the people that will quickly tie back all the shitty policies hosing them financial to the GOP that put them forward.
I guess the only question is when do the tariffs really start fucking the economy. I'm leaning towards before the midterms. Hell, there are already companies laying people off because of this shit and big business pretty much gave the little guy the finger once they got their tax breaks. So we're really not seeing wages go up and I'd wager the wages in areas that are going up. Are only going up because other factors are pushing them up and that the asshole corporate class would be cutting wages if they thought they could get away with it.
If you had a compensation spectrum for employees that had "Equitable Profit Sharing" on one end and "slavery" on the other you'd see plenty of people argue that a corporation's only ethical imperative on that scale is to push towards slavery as hard as they can since that benefits their shareholders.
I wonder why unions don't pool salaries to buy out the companies they work for.
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I wonder why unions don't pool salaries to buy out the companies they work for.
People are paid very little.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
I wonder why unions don't pool salaries to buy out the companies they work for.
UAW owns/owned a large number of shares in the Big Three. The thing is, diversifying your pension plan's portfolio is true for large institutional holders same as individuals, and they need to give out even more in benefits when things go under at, say, GM.
Venezuela didn't try that as much as was the government just taking everything they could with whatever means they could (including using public institutions to bully companies to decrease their price) and daring corporations to do something about it.
Which, they did. Turns out that doing that makes it so you lose a lot of lawsuits on international courts, who knew.
I wonder why unions don't pool salaries to buy out the companies they work for.
People are paid very little.
There's several other things aside from salaries being not sufficient.
First is how the stock market is structured and how it's run. So let's say you can acquiring a sufficient number of shares to exert some level of control. Even then that doesn't mean much since there are going to be the other shareholders to convince to be on the same side as you. Who might be those other shareholders? For the most part we're talking about institutional holders, e.g. investment banks, funds, funds, and more funds, some of who are the funds you're invested in as part of your 401(k)/403(b)/IRA/etc. And then there are the insiders who often have loads of stock because reasons. Why? Because that's how companies are run. It takes a lot of politics to make things happen. You should read about the investor nuns and how they've been trying for some time now to influence companies to do better by their employees and the environment to little or no success. Mostly because everyone else wants theirs and fuck you.
But let's go back and look at the part skipped over there. The stock situation. The first example to look at would be Google or Alphabet. Just because you own the stock which is put on the exchange doesn't mean you get voting rights over what the company does. In fact, there are several companies like that who float stock as a means to have a measure of how powerful and/or wealthy they are. You need to have certain kinds of shares, that may or may not be available to purchase on a stock exchange. Needless to say not everyone can purchase those shares. In the case of Alphabet, there haven't been an issuance of voting stock in some time and a vast majority of said shares resides in the hands of the two founders of the company. Another company that is similar is Berkshire Hathaway, but while they're mostly privately held they do occasionally invite people to purchase shares at a rather exorbitant price point.
On the other hand, let's stipulate that the stock has voting rights and that the stock is available for purchase on the open exchange. That still doesn't mean much. It could be the situation where you'd need millions of shares to have 1% of the vote. This is something that Warren Buffet faced several times when trying to influence a direction a company went in, notably Kraft. There he ran into the first example from above and found no allies in the rest of the company to go along with his decisions. Or better yet, let's look at Facebook. Where the common stock, also called the A shares have one vote per share. Seems simple enough. Until you look at the fact that the privately held B shares have 10 votes per share. And largely reside in the hands of insiders. Oh! And they can award themselves extra votes when it come to certain situations. So even if you had a million shares, you still run a very good chance at being out voted.
Mind you, as a minority shareholder you do have some rights to fight against corporate abuse but none of those rights give you the ability to make the working conditions in the company better. Those rights are there to protect the value of the stock you own, not your position, your pay, or anything else.
Even as an employee-owner there's not a lot you could do.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
The stock market is also sort of sham. A fair bit of "value" isn't based on actually evidence, but rather on how people feel based on narratives. Throw in the fact that short term thinking and selfish desires are rewarded, rather than long term thinking and greater good. I'm really not happy that the stock market is playing such an out sized role in the economy and this has been the case for awhile. I can't help but feel this setup is largely to blame for some of that is going down. For instance it's become a nice little pipeline for ignorant psychopaths to use to amass power and influence and the US has a stupid culture, where people tend to prefer to defer to the rich.
The stock market is also sort of sham. A fair bit of "value" isn't based on actually evidence, but rather on how people feel based on narratives. Throw in the fact that short term thinking and selfish desires are rewarded, rather than long term thinking and greater good. I'm really not happy that the stock market is playing such an out sized role in the economy and this has been the case for awhile. I can't help but feel this setup is largely to blame for some of that is going down. For instance it's become a nice little pipeline for ignorant psychopaths to use to amass power and influence and the US has a stupid culture, where people tend to prefer to defer to the rich.
Oh yeah. There's a lot to untangle there. From LLCs being abused to hide straw purchases, high-speed front running, and nearly 40 years of deregulations up to and including such hits as: Company stock buy-backs! Once heralded as the number one with a red arrow as a sign of price manipulation, this one was done away with under your and my favorite former actor and party jumper, Ronald Reagan.
I worked it out with a former CS professor who's now in the private sector how you could use high speed trading bots to send stenographic messages based on buy/sell patterns one afternoon. Talk about side-channel chatter. If I could figure out that this is possible, I shudder to think what those traders are able to do with their financial asses on the line. There is so much ripe for abuse and misuse in the computer trading arena, that would be the first thing I'd kill until new regulations were brought online to give people a plain-sight view into what's going on at any given time on top of making it even more tied to human levels of reaction time.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
The captains of Corporate America are steering a record amount of cash into stock buybacks.
Companies have announced them this year at a rate of more than $5 billion a day. The buyback boom has been viewed by investors as a sign of confidence among CEOs.
Yet with their own money, executives are quietly taking a much different approach: They're cashing out.
I'm shocked, shocked that the stock buybacks are being used to pump and dump.
The captains of Corporate America are steering a record amount of cash into stock buybacks.
Companies have announced them this year at a rate of more than $5 billion a day. The buyback boom has been viewed by investors as a sign of confidence among CEOs.
Yet with their own money, executives are quietly taking a much different approach: They're cashing out.
I'm shocked, shocked that the stock buybacks are being used to pump and dump.
The stock market is also sort of sham. A fair bit of "value" isn't based on actually evidence, but rather on how people feel based on narratives. Throw in the fact that short term thinking and selfish desires are rewarded, rather than long term thinking and greater good. I'm really not happy that the stock market is playing such an out sized role in the economy and this has been the case for awhile. I can't help but feel this setup is largely to blame for some of that is going down. For instance it's become a nice little pipeline for ignorant psychopaths to use to amass power and influence and the US has a stupid culture, where people tend to prefer to defer to the rich.
I basically see the stock market as baseball card trading. Buy a stock for X, sell it for Y, who cares about what it’s actually worth, the only important part is how much people are willing to pay for it.
I wonder what a stock market driven solely by people looking for long term dividend value would look like. It’d probably need a transaction fee on all stock sales. Even a tax of 0.1% would slow down the bots doing millions of trades a second.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
The stock market is also sort of sham. A fair bit of "value" isn't based on actually evidence, but rather on how people feel based on narratives. Throw in the fact that short term thinking and selfish desires are rewarded, rather than long term thinking and greater good. I'm really not happy that the stock market is playing such an out sized role in the economy and this has been the case for awhile. I can't help but feel this setup is largely to blame for some of that is going down. For instance it's become a nice little pipeline for ignorant psychopaths to use to amass power and influence and the US has a stupid culture, where people tend to prefer to defer to the rich.
Oh yeah. There's a lot to untangle there. From LLCs being abused to hide straw purchases, high-speed front running, and nearly 40 years of deregulations up to and including such hits as: Company stock buy-backs! Once heralded as the number one with a red arrow as a sign of price manipulation, this one was done away with under your and my favorite former actor and party jumper, Ronald Reagan.
Stock buy-backs are still heralded as price manipulation. But with the now legal focus on increasing shareholder value, it's considered to be a Good Thing(tm).
There's a real problem in the markets in that the expectation is that stock value will always go up in much the same way that home values will always go up, which leads to crashes like The Great Depression in 2008 and numerous bubbles since deregulation went into effect under Reagan.
The SEC needs to be given real teeth again, and the mandate should be shifted away from "ever increasing share value" to "market stability" and "stock market gains should not greatly outstrip inflation" or some other better limiting marker.
Right now, diversified funds are a gamble that you can't lose on, and also a gamble you can only bet on if you're already rich. And yes, I realize that anyone can buy into a diversified fund, but there's a vast gulf between the little-to-no investment that 90% of Americans can make, and the huge profits that the top 0.1% can realize. The stock market, as it stands now, is an important piece in the machine that transfers wealth accumulation away from your average American and to the super rich.
The stock market is also sort of sham. A fair bit of "value" isn't based on actually evidence, but rather on how people feel based on narratives. Throw in the fact that short term thinking and selfish desires are rewarded, rather than long term thinking and greater good. I'm really not happy that the stock market is playing such an out sized role in the economy and this has been the case for awhile. I can't help but feel this setup is largely to blame for some of that is going down. For instance it's become a nice little pipeline for ignorant psychopaths to use to amass power and influence and the US has a stupid culture, where people tend to prefer to defer to the rich.
The stock market typically has a lot more transparency than the bond and derivatives market, especially for OTC derivatives that are uncleared. The negotiated value of stocks is...basic economics. Maybe a little bit more than that but It's not really a sham. It's a market where you exchange shit. It's also one of the most transparent markets out there, even with shit like dark pools and HFT. You can easily find prospectuses and you can clearly see agreements on what type of asset you're buying. There's no surprise features that you didn't read too closely about.
Also other countries have stock markets?
Also stock markets aren't exactly like gravity. Asset appreciation doesn't exactly lead to massive crashes in value. It just means that there's value to crash.
The stock market is also sort of sham. A fair bit of "value" isn't based on actually evidence, but rather on how people feel based on narratives. Throw in the fact that short term thinking and selfish desires are rewarded, rather than long term thinking and greater good. I'm really not happy that the stock market is playing such an out sized role in the economy and this has been the case for awhile. I can't help but feel this setup is largely to blame for some of that is going down. For instance it's become a nice little pipeline for ignorant psychopaths to use to amass power and influence and the US has a stupid culture, where people tend to prefer to defer to the rich.
Oh yeah. There's a lot to untangle there. From LLCs being abused to hide straw purchases, high-speed front running, and nearly 40 years of deregulations up to and including such hits as: Company stock buy-backs! Once heralded as the number one with a red arrow as a sign of price manipulation, this one was done away with under your and my favorite former actor and party jumper, Ronald Reagan.
Stock buy-backs are still heralded as price manipulation. But with the now legal focus on increasing shareholder value, it's considered to be a Good Thing(tm).
There's a real problem in the markets in that the expectation is that stock value will always go up in much the same way that home values will always go up, which leads to crashes like The Great Depression in 2008 and numerous bubbles since deregulation went into effect under Reagan.
The SEC needs to be given real teeth again, and the mandate should be shifted away from "ever increasing share value" to "market stability" and "stock market gains should not greatly outstrip inflation" or some other better limiting marker.
Right now, diversified funds are a gamble that you can't lose on, and also a gamble you can only bet on if you're already rich. And yes, I realize that anyone can buy into a diversified fund, but there's a vast gulf between the little-to-no investment that 90% of Americans can make, and the huge profits that the top 0.1% can realize. The stock market, as it stands now, is an important piece in the machine that transfers wealth accumulation away from your average American and to the super rich.
Prior to Reagan's appointees to the SEC it was a strictly illegal thing to do since price manipulation is considered and should still be IMHO destabilizing to the market. Without price being out of the hands of the company how can you trust the value-signals it's supposed to represent?
Not to make too political a point, but I do find it interesting how the rise of authoritarian in the GOP and the increase wealth gap in go hand-in-hand. How much of fascist ideology and idolization comes from the "fuck you, got mine" mindset and how much of it comes from fetishization of the wealthy?
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
The stock market is also sort of sham. A fair bit of "value" isn't based on actually evidence, but rather on how people feel based on narratives. Throw in the fact that short term thinking and selfish desires are rewarded, rather than long term thinking and greater good. I'm really not happy that the stock market is playing such an out sized role in the economy and this has been the case for awhile. I can't help but feel this setup is largely to blame for some of that is going down. For instance it's become a nice little pipeline for ignorant psychopaths to use to amass power and influence and the US has a stupid culture, where people tend to prefer to defer to the rich.
Oh yeah. There's a lot to untangle there. From LLCs being abused to hide straw purchases, high-speed front running, and nearly 40 years of deregulations up to and including such hits as: Company stock buy-backs! Once heralded as the number one with a red arrow as a sign of price manipulation, this one was done away with under your and my favorite former actor and party jumper, Ronald Reagan.
Stock buy-backs are still heralded as price manipulation. But with the now legal focus on increasing shareholder value, it's considered to be a Good Thing(tm).
There's a real problem in the markets in that the expectation is that stock value will always go up in much the same way that home values will always go up, which leads to crashes like The Great Depression in 2008 and numerous bubbles since deregulation went into effect under Reagan.
The SEC needs to be given real teeth again, and the mandate should be shifted away from "ever increasing share value" to "market stability" and "stock market gains should not greatly outstrip inflation" or some other better limiting marker.
Right now, diversified funds are a gamble that you can't lose on, and also a gamble you can only bet on if you're already rich. And yes, I realize that anyone can buy into a diversified fund, but there's a vast gulf between the little-to-no investment that 90% of Americans can make, and the huge profits that the top 0.1% can realize. The stock market, as it stands now, is an important piece in the machine that transfers wealth accumulation away from your average American and to the super rich.
Prior to Reagan's appointees to the SEC it was a strictly illegal thing to do since price manipulation is considered and should still be IMHO destabilizing to the market. Without price being out of the hands of the company how can you trust the value-signals it's supposed to represent?
Not to make too political a point, but I do find it interesting how the rise of authoritarian in the GOP and the increase wealth gap in go hand-in-hand. How much of fascist ideology and idolization comes from the "fuck you, got mine" mindset and how much of it comes from fetishization of the wealthy?
Capitalism results in decadence(or inequity) resembling China under the First Emperor in every country on Earth. In order to pretend capitalism is meritocracy, you'd need to rate yourself low. Then, when people are worse off than you, you'd need to rate them lower. When people who you know or have been repeatedly told are worse than you succeed, you need to believe they are criminals, cheaters, etcetera. One can easily reach the conclusion that "the cheaters" and people lower on the pole than you are wrecking shit.
On a sociological level, deluded(disembedded) liberalism(market worship, rejection of the Smithian theory of value) either collapses (into ethnostates, failed states, and robber economies), or becomes more equitable, either through revolution or reform. The revolution does not need to succeed in order to force concessions or a transition to social democracy, as evinced by many of the reforms governments were forced to implement through radical action and agitation.
I'm honestly not even sure what you're trying to get at with that post.
Keep the poor bickering over leftovers via classism and othering and it's easy to engage in trickle up economics which, in contrast to trickle down, actually do work.
Yeah that's what I figured I just didnt get the excessive and sweeping generalizations.
Like, capitalism leads to the decadence of Qin Shi Huang in all countries? That's not accurate let alone a useful statement
We have global markets and international bodies which exist to prevent countries from nationalizing and naturalizing things. The leavings of industry are killing the ocean and we're currently wondering whether the phytoplankton will die off before the clathrate gun fires. Without significant intervention, the resulting supply shocks(or cessation of oxygen production) will destroy nations and start a bunch of wars.
The waste byproducts of the global elite's continued existence are going to kill plural billions. How the fuck is that not a global condition of decadence that exceeds literally the worst pre-modern example of a rich asshole?
Yeah that's what I figured I just didnt get the excessive and sweeping generalizations.
Like, capitalism leads to the decadence of Qin Shi Huang in all countries? That's not accurate let alone a useful statement
We have global markets and international bodies which exist to prevent countries from nationalizing and naturalizing things. The leavings of industry are killing the ocean and we're currently wondering whether the phytoplankton will die off before the clathrate gun fires. Without significant intervention, the resulting supply shocks(or cessation of oxygen production) will destroy nations and start a bunch of wars.
The waste byproducts of the global elite's continued existence are going to kill plural billions. How the fuck is that not a global condition of decadence that exceeds literally the worst pre-modern example of a rich asshole?
Can't say I can argue with your premise here. That said, what's the explanation of the lack of pressure from the public to do anything about this? Politicians and their policies operate on specific results, they won't do things like this on their own. They need to be pushed.
Economic systems rely on the political systems to implement and influence what they do yet nowhere in the world are there any countries doing anything or getting the appropriate pushback from their communities to fix this. And this is not limited to capitalist countries by a long shot.
If politicians aren't seeing political pressure from their constituents or the national psych of their country they won't take it seriously as they have more important issues to worry about relating to their jobs. Like healthcare, or taxes. I say this as someone who agrees that this is one of most important crises in our life time.
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No. They're retained after-tax profits, proceeds from taking out debt, paper investments like stocks, etc. We tax profits, not assets (for the most part).
Also, they hide money. Taxes are only applied to profits on cash from profit that is brought back to corporation's origin.
Are those companies actually holding literal cash? I was under the assumption they put it in very liquid low risk investments like US treasuries. It seems like a higher target would encourage these companies to either spend the cash or invest it both which would be better for the economy than them holding it.
if they do those things they have to pay taxes on it
They changed that. US tax on overseas profits is now 5% and there is no repatriation penalty. (This is actually better than a lot of countries, which don't tax foreign profits at all). I'm pretty sure they made that all permanent.
I'm not sure how I feel about this because one of the reasons America grew to be such a powerful player all over the world was because of our high repatriation taxes. Once our companies started investing overseas, many of them looked at the high repatriation taxes and said screw that, let's just keep our foreign profits abroad and reinvest them there. It's one of the big contributing factors as to why a disproportionate amount of the world's biggest international companies are American, and now we've given up that incentive.
Treasuries/cash equivalents are similarly impacted by rising inflation as the quarters in your couch.
They're largely not actual bills but rather cash equivalents. There isn't any real difference between corporate paper and money in a bank account and there isn't much difference between that and treasuries. Its largely in corporate paper though is my understanding.
Since tariffs have two effect groups, producers and consumers, the country instituting tariffs may be "helping" producers, but they're hurting consumers by putting them on.
I guess the only question is when do the tariffs really start fucking the economy. I'm leaning towards before the midterms. Hell, there are already companies laying people off because of this shit and big business pretty much gave the little guy the finger once they got their tax breaks. So we're really not seeing wages go up and I'd wager the wages in areas that are going up. Are only going up because other factors are pushing them up and that the asshole corporate class would be cutting wages if they thought they could get away with it.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Because the effects of the tariff are localized to the industries you’re helping and because there is an equal effect on the other side.
That is the other countries are attempting to punish producers in the United States who support trump or who could have enough political sway to end our tariffs.
Edit: basically they are defecting until the US comes to its senses and stops defecting. Given how Rs operate they may have to wait a long time.
If you had a compensation spectrum for employees that had "Equitable Profit Sharing" on one end and "slavery" on the other you'd see plenty of people argue that a corporation's only ethical imperative on that scale is to push towards slavery as hard as they can since that benefits their shareholders.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
What do you mean 'if'
I wonder why unions don't pool salaries to buy out the companies they work for.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
People are paid very little.
UAW owns/owned a large number of shares in the Big Three. The thing is, diversifying your pension plan's portfolio is true for large institutional holders same as individuals, and they need to give out even more in benefits when things go under at, say, GM.
Because that would be a closed shop under most legal definitions, and Taft-Hartley made that illegal.
Lots of countries have.
Which, they did. Turns out that doing that makes it so you lose a lot of lawsuits on international courts, who knew.
There's several other things aside from salaries being not sufficient.
First is how the stock market is structured and how it's run. So let's say you can acquiring a sufficient number of shares to exert some level of control. Even then that doesn't mean much since there are going to be the other shareholders to convince to be on the same side as you. Who might be those other shareholders? For the most part we're talking about institutional holders, e.g. investment banks, funds, funds, and more funds, some of who are the funds you're invested in as part of your 401(k)/403(b)/IRA/etc. And then there are the insiders who often have loads of stock because reasons. Why? Because that's how companies are run. It takes a lot of politics to make things happen. You should read about the investor nuns and how they've been trying for some time now to influence companies to do better by their employees and the environment to little or no success. Mostly because everyone else wants theirs and fuck you.
But let's go back and look at the part skipped over there. The stock situation. The first example to look at would be Google or Alphabet. Just because you own the stock which is put on the exchange doesn't mean you get voting rights over what the company does. In fact, there are several companies like that who float stock as a means to have a measure of how powerful and/or wealthy they are. You need to have certain kinds of shares, that may or may not be available to purchase on a stock exchange. Needless to say not everyone can purchase those shares. In the case of Alphabet, there haven't been an issuance of voting stock in some time and a vast majority of said shares resides in the hands of the two founders of the company. Another company that is similar is Berkshire Hathaway, but while they're mostly privately held they do occasionally invite people to purchase shares at a rather exorbitant price point.
On the other hand, let's stipulate that the stock has voting rights and that the stock is available for purchase on the open exchange. That still doesn't mean much. It could be the situation where you'd need millions of shares to have 1% of the vote. This is something that Warren Buffet faced several times when trying to influence a direction a company went in, notably Kraft. There he ran into the first example from above and found no allies in the rest of the company to go along with his decisions. Or better yet, let's look at Facebook. Where the common stock, also called the A shares have one vote per share. Seems simple enough. Until you look at the fact that the privately held B shares have 10 votes per share. And largely reside in the hands of insiders. Oh! And they can award themselves extra votes when it come to certain situations. So even if you had a million shares, you still run a very good chance at being out voted.
Mind you, as a minority shareholder you do have some rights to fight against corporate abuse but none of those rights give you the ability to make the working conditions in the company better. Those rights are there to protect the value of the stock you own, not your position, your pay, or anything else.
Even as an employee-owner there's not a lot you could do.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Oh yeah. There's a lot to untangle there. From LLCs being abused to hide straw purchases, high-speed front running, and nearly 40 years of deregulations up to and including such hits as: Company stock buy-backs! Once heralded as the number one with a red arrow as a sign of price manipulation, this one was done away with under your and my favorite former actor and party jumper, Ronald Reagan.
I worked it out with a former CS professor who's now in the private sector how you could use high speed trading bots to send stenographic messages based on buy/sell patterns one afternoon. Talk about side-channel chatter. If I could figure out that this is possible, I shudder to think what those traders are able to do with their financial asses on the line. There is so much ripe for abuse and misuse in the computer trading arena, that would be the first thing I'd kill until new regulations were brought online to give people a plain-sight view into what's going on at any given time on top of making it even more tied to human levels of reaction time.
The problem is that you have to set up a code and get that code to everyone involved so they know where to look and when.
I'm shocked, shocked that the stock buybacks are being used to pump and dump.
The only thing that is shooting up by over 60% is the deficit, which is on track to rise 68% by the end of next year.
oh good.
this won't go terribly sideways.
I basically see the stock market as baseball card trading. Buy a stock for X, sell it for Y, who cares about what it’s actually worth, the only important part is how much people are willing to pay for it.
I wonder what a stock market driven solely by people looking for long term dividend value would look like. It’d probably need a transaction fee on all stock sales. Even a tax of 0.1% would slow down the bots doing millions of trades a second.
Like the whole developed world has been running interest rates at 0-0.5% for the last 10 years. How much lower can you go?
Stock buy-backs are still heralded as price manipulation. But with the now legal focus on increasing shareholder value, it's considered to be a Good Thing(tm).
There's a real problem in the markets in that the expectation is that stock value will always go up in much the same way that home values will always go up, which leads to crashes like The Great Depression in 2008 and numerous bubbles since deregulation went into effect under Reagan.
The SEC needs to be given real teeth again, and the mandate should be shifted away from "ever increasing share value" to "market stability" and "stock market gains should not greatly outstrip inflation" or some other better limiting marker.
Right now, diversified funds are a gamble that you can't lose on, and also a gamble you can only bet on if you're already rich. And yes, I realize that anyone can buy into a diversified fund, but there's a vast gulf between the little-to-no investment that 90% of Americans can make, and the huge profits that the top 0.1% can realize. The stock market, as it stands now, is an important piece in the machine that transfers wealth accumulation away from your average American and to the super rich.
The stock market typically has a lot more transparency than the bond and derivatives market, especially for OTC derivatives that are uncleared. The negotiated value of stocks is...basic economics. Maybe a little bit more than that but It's not really a sham. It's a market where you exchange shit. It's also one of the most transparent markets out there, even with shit like dark pools and HFT. You can easily find prospectuses and you can clearly see agreements on what type of asset you're buying. There's no surprise features that you didn't read too closely about.
Also other countries have stock markets?
Also stock markets aren't exactly like gravity. Asset appreciation doesn't exactly lead to massive crashes in value. It just means that there's value to crash.
Prior to Reagan's appointees to the SEC it was a strictly illegal thing to do since price manipulation is considered and should still be IMHO destabilizing to the market. Without price being out of the hands of the company how can you trust the value-signals it's supposed to represent?
Not to make too political a point, but I do find it interesting how the rise of authoritarian in the GOP and the increase wealth gap in go hand-in-hand. How much of fascist ideology and idolization comes from the "fuck you, got mine" mindset and how much of it comes from fetishization of the wealthy?
Capitalism results in decadence(or inequity) resembling China under the First Emperor in every country on Earth. In order to pretend capitalism is meritocracy, you'd need to rate yourself low. Then, when people are worse off than you, you'd need to rate them lower. When people who you know or have been repeatedly told are worse than you succeed, you need to believe they are criminals, cheaters, etcetera. One can easily reach the conclusion that "the cheaters" and people lower on the pole than you are wrecking shit.
On a sociological level, deluded(disembedded) liberalism(market worship, rejection of the Smithian theory of value) either collapses (into ethnostates, failed states, and robber economies), or becomes more equitable, either through revolution or reform. The revolution does not need to succeed in order to force concessions or a transition to social democracy, as evinced by many of the reforms governments were forced to implement through radical action and agitation.
I'm honestly not even sure what you're trying to get at with that post.
Keep the poor bickering over leftovers via classism and othering and it's easy to engage in trickle up economics which, in contrast to trickle down, actually do work.
Like, capitalism leads to the decadence of Qin Shi Huang in all countries? That's not accurate let alone a useful statement
We have global markets and international bodies which exist to prevent countries from nationalizing and naturalizing things. The leavings of industry are killing the ocean and we're currently wondering whether the phytoplankton will die off before the clathrate gun fires. Without significant intervention, the resulting supply shocks(or cessation of oxygen production) will destroy nations and start a bunch of wars.
The waste byproducts of the global elite's continued existence are going to kill plural billions. How the fuck is that not a global condition of decadence that exceeds literally the worst pre-modern example of a rich asshole?
Can't say I can argue with your premise here. That said, what's the explanation of the lack of pressure from the public to do anything about this? Politicians and their policies operate on specific results, they won't do things like this on their own. They need to be pushed.
Economic systems rely on the political systems to implement and influence what they do yet nowhere in the world are there any countries doing anything or getting the appropriate pushback from their communities to fix this. And this is not limited to capitalist countries by a long shot.
If politicians aren't seeing political pressure from their constituents or the national psych of their country they won't take it seriously as they have more important issues to worry about relating to their jobs. Like healthcare, or taxes. I say this as someone who agrees that this is one of most important crises in our life time.